#153 – An Interview with Ryan O’Hara – Keyed, Kerfed Kapton

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Welcome, Ryan O’Hara of Ohararp.com!

• Ryan is a mechanical engineer who has crossed into the electrical domain in various ways.
• His PhD work was research around robots that fly like bees. It was also featured on NPR in the US. Later he studied wings similar to the Manduca Sexta.
• Since graduating, Ryan has continued to serve in the US Air Force.
• He used to live down in Dayton, where Chris recently attended Hamvention.
• To construct tiny wings, Ryan used the ablation feature available with the LPKF ProtoLaserU3, a UV (355 nm) laser device. These days Ryan uses a CO2 laser, which burns more than ablating.
• The wing material was partially made from FR1500. See the entire material stack up here (pdf).
• The robot insect was controlled by custom ASIC (metalized gate array), similar to what Jeri Ellsworth is doing for the CastAR.
• Ryan achieved his lift targets for the robot by employing biomimicry. Why not let nature do the heavy lifting?
• Later he did consulting work ,which he got through publishing some open projects. One was glacier monitoring, using a low cost device.
• This is how he got into learning about the need for stencils and the different materials used to construct them. Limor from adafruit did a tutorial using info from Ryan.
• His mechanical background came in handy. Ryan recommends the Protomold draft tutorials to learn more about the importance when molding plastic.
• The thickness of the stencil is a standard 3.5/1000th inch. 
• Kapton has about 100 uses before the smaller features start to fall apart. One thing that lowers the life span is using a metal spatula to spread solder paste. Ryan suggests using a credit card/hotel key card instead.
• Ryan suggests the Sparkfun tutorial about paste/stencils.
• Jeff Rowberg from BlueGiga has been working on the KeyGlove recently. He also got it to work with Google Glass (hey, Chris was excited).
• Glass has the invensense MPU-9150, a 9 axis motion tracking device.
• LEDs capture Ryan’s attention, as well as his kids and some Christmas decoration enthusiasts. He started a new boutique company, RGB-123.
• Ryan picked up a Quad PnP to do in-house assembly as a value-added solution for consulting clients. 
• He got a refurbished machine and feeders from GoPPM, a dangerous site since Ryan is a self-confessed tool junkie.
• He also had help from Twitter. @AutoSportLabs and others helped to narrow it down.
• Dave interacted with the PnP that did his boards in the video where he visited his assembly house:
  [tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHNpayYhBvM[/tube]
• Everyone favors surface mount for automation reasons, but Chris recently saw a tiny solder pot for tinning wires.
• Moving to a full time maker business is a big decision, but Dave says it shouldn’t be a hard one. 
• Ryan was nice enough to mention Chris’s upcoming program, Contextual Electronics.

Thanks again to Ryan for being on the show! He’s offering a coupon to all interested listeners. Use the coupon code  “amphour20” – Coupon is for 20% off Kapton stencils and expires 16 Jul 2013.

Find Ryan on Twitter at @ohararp

Image credit: Ohararp.com